Antiquities. -- There is a hill in the parish of Aboyne, called Mullach’s hill, in which there are a great number of cairns, said to be burial-places, after a great battle, in which one Mullach was killed.
As you’d expect really. From the first Statistical Account for Aboyne, of the 1790s. The second version likes to think Mullach was a Danish king or general, but calls it a ‘confused tradition’. Actually ‘Mullach’ seems to mean the hilltop in Gaelic...
Dardanus – a King of Scotland who is said to have reigned before Christ, he was put to death for his cruelties.
Universal Historical Dictionary – George Crabb.
In a note from a MS. of Mr. Rowlands, the author of Mona Antiqua, this stone is said, having long lost its virtue, to have been stolen within his memory. There was once a tradition also concerning it, that when a wish was made before it, if the wish was to come to pass, the person who expressed the wish could lift it up with ease; but, if not, then it became so heavy, that his utmost strength could not raise it. In the latter case, it required but little art to produce the effect unknown to the simple inquirer.
from ‘The Cambrian Popular Antiquities’ by Peter Roberts, 1815.
archive.org/stream/cambrianpopular00robegoog#page/n230
I’m not sure that makes sense. I admit I don’t know if it’s still there.
This rather strange conical hill had a defended enclosure built on it in the Iron Age. The battle of Crug Mawr was fought in the vicinity in 1136 (Welsh 1, Normans 0). It seems to be the location for the following story:
Crug Mawr, or Pen tychryd Mawr, is a mountain, or lofty hill, in Cardiganshire, situated in the vale of Ayeron, mentioned in Giraldus, where, he says,
“there is an open grave, which fits the length of any man lying in it, short or long.”
Hence rose the ancient tradition, that a powerful cawr, or giant, kept his post on this hill, who was endowed with the genius of the Ayeron vale. He had a lofty palace erected on the hill, and used occasionally to invite the neighbouring giants to a trial of strength on the top of it; at one of these meetings coits were proposed and introduced, and, after great efforts, the inhabitant of the spot won the day, by throwing his coit clear into the Irish shore, which ever after gave him the superiority over all other giants in Caredig land.
He then proceeds to explain the stories away in a manner that completely misses the point that they are stories, invoking mistranslations and concealed machinery. Tch.
From ‘The Cambrian Popular Antiquities’ by Peter Roberts, 1815.
archive.org/stream/cambrianpopular00robegoog#page/n238/
.. an account of St. Maddern’s Well in the parish of Penzance, Cornwall. From Camden. Ed. Gibson, p21, 22.
“Bishop Hall tells us (Mystery of Godliness), that a cripple, who for sixteen years together was forced to walk upon his hands, by reason of the sinews of his legs being contracted, was induced, by a dream, to wash in this well; which had so good effect, that himself saw him both able to walk, and to get his own maintenance. Two persons that had found the prescriptions of physicians altogether unprofitable, went to this well (according to the ancient custom), on Corpus Christi eve, and laying a small offering on the altar, drank of the water, and lay upon the ground all night, in the morning took a good draught more, and each of them carried away some of the water in a bottle. Within three weeks they found the effect of it; and (their strength increasing by degrees) were able to move themselves upon crutches. Next year they took the same course, after which they were able to go up and down by the help of a staff. At length one of them, being a fisherman, was, and, if he be alive is, still able to follow that business. The other was a soldier under Sir William Godolphin, and died in the service of King Charles I.
After this the well was superstitiously frequented, so that the rector of the neighbouring parish was forced to reprove several of his parishioners for it. But accidentaly meeting a woman coming from it with a bottle in her hand, and being troubled with cholical pains, desired to drink of it, and found himself cured of that distemper.
The instances are too near our own time, and too well attested, to fall under the suspicion of bare traditions, or legendary fables: and, being so very remarkable, may well claim a place her. Only, ‘tis worth our observation, that the last of them destroys the miracle; for, if he was cured upon accidentally tasting it, then the ceremonies of offering, lying on the ground, &c., contributed nothing; and so the virtue of the water claims the whole remedy.”
I suspect, that the patients who are said to have lain on the ground, did so under the altar of the church; as it was the custom in other cases of a similar kind. Borlase says, the water is simply pure, without any mineral impregnation, and rises through a stratum of grey moor-stone gravel. He adds,
“Hither also, on much less justifiable errands (than to cure pains in the limbs), come the uneasy, impatient, and superstitious; and by dropping pins, or pebbles, into the water, and by shaking the ground round the spring, so as to raise bubbles from the bottom, at a certain time of the year, moon, and day, endeavour to settle such doubts and inquiries will not let the idle and anxious rest.”
Oh I think Mr Cameron would like this well very much. He’d like the way the Cured Cripples went back to gainful employment. Don’t tell him about it though or he’ll probably privatise the damn thing.
This is from ‘The Cambrian Popular Antiquities’ by Peter Roberts, 1815.
archive.org/stream/cambrianpopular00robegoog#page/n272/
... Magdalen Hill, or down, on which a fair is held on the second of August, being the feast of St. Mary Magdalen, old style. On the hill, and within a furlong of the fair ground, stood, in antient times, the Hospital of St. Mary Magdalen, founded towards the close of the twelfth century, by Richard de Toclyve, Bishop of Winchester; and, to show the connexion of the establishment and the fair, it is only necessary to add, that the master of this charity, which still exists, though “curtailed in its fair proportions,” possesses certain rights in respect to it, but which are not now asserted.
Notes and Essays, archaeological, historical and topographical, relating to the counties of Hants and Wilts (1851) by Henry Moody.
books.google.co.uk/books?id=i-MMAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA30
About four miles east from Tavistock, and close by the road which leads from that town to Moreton-Hampstead, are several Circular arrangements and rows of stones, the origin of which is unknown. The tradition prevails, that they were collected and disposed in particular forms at a time when a dreadful plague raged at Tavistock, and that the inhabitants resorted to this place for provisions. The farmers bringing their marketable commodities, and placing them on certain stones, retired to a distance, when the purchasers took the goods, and left money in their place.
From ‘The Beauties of England and Wales’ volume IV, 1803.
books.google.co.uk/books?id=7IlCAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA229
On the top of a hill to the west of Llangadfan, there are the remains of a very large carn not less than sixty yards in circumference. It now consists chiefly of small round stones, the larger evidently having been carried away by some of the farmers. The name of the place is Pen Cad Cymry, the head battle of the Welsh; and the tradition in the neighbourhood respecting these remains is that there was a church there at one time. This tradition may have originated from the circumstance that it was at one time a place of interment.
He also mentions Garneddwen (white) and Garnedd las (blue) cairns that are not far away, and a great number of smaller barrows. Rather than head, I think ‘Pen’ refers to the bare mountain top?
From ‘History of the Parish of Llangadfan’ by the Rev. Griffith Edwards, in ‘Collections historical & archaeological relating to Montgomeryshire, Volume 2‘
books.google.co.uk/books?id=tS4LAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA441
Well, I’m sure this story must relate to the landmarks round here, but I’m not sure exactly which is what. I can’t see the stone on Coflein either – I wonder if it’s still about.
There is an erect stone, of the class called Maen hir by antiquaries, on a field near Llymysten (see drawing). There is no inscription on it. It has been broken, and there are large fragments lying around. Judging from the diameter of the fragment now standing, its original height would not exceed nine or ten feet.
The tradition in the neighbourhood respecting the stone is, that it was thrown there by a giant from the top of a hill called Gogerddan, more than a mile distant. This giant, and another, his neighbour, who dwelt on the top of a hill called Esgair, near Llymysten, fell out, and had recourse to hostilities in a way worthy of giants, by throwing huge masses of rocks to each other, from the tops of the hills upon which they dwelt. The giant on the top of Esgair threw an immense stone to his antagonist, called Maen llwyd, which is yet remembered by many of the inhabitants, lying in a field near the turnpike road below Garthbeibio Church, and it is said that marks of the giant’s fingers were plainly seen on it, shewing with what force he had grasped it. The stone has now been unfortunately broken up and used to erect a wall, and the truth of this assertion cannot be brought to the test by those who doubt it. Both these giants seem, however, to have over-rated their strength, as the stones fell short of the mark in each case, and lay harmless on the plain at a distance from the hills to which they had been directed. Another large stone, thrown, as the tradition is, from the top of a hill on the other side of the valley by a giant, lies now in a hollow on the mountain near a place called Pren Croes.
From ‘History of the Parish of Llangadfan’ by the Rev. Griffith Edwards, in ‘Collections historical & archaeological relating to Montgomeryshire, Volume 2‘
books.google.co.uk/books?id=tS4LAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA440
I learnt (12th Sept., 1884) another tradition of hidden treasures. At the Bury Ditches, a very large entrenched camp some five miles from Clun, there is buried a ‘stean’ (an earthen pan, see Word-Book) of gold belonging to the fairies. A clue of golden wire is attached to it, which will lead the seeker to the spot. My informant remembered hearing the story as a child, 1839-1845, and wanting to search for the end of the clue when gathering wimberries there.
From volume 3 of Charlotte Burne’s ‘Shropshire Folk-lore’ (1886).
The summer festivities of the county came to an end on the last Sunday in August with the Titterstone Wake, held on the most southerly of our beautiful hills [..]
Mr. Thomas Powell, to whom this book is indebted for many notes on South Shropshire customs, tells me that when he ascended the hill on the Wake-Sunday of 1861, he and his boy-companions, in obedience to custom, seated themselves one by one in the Giant’s Chair, and there sang ‘some rustic lines,’ which unfortunately he cannot now remember. This ceremony is not mentioned in the account given by an old carpenter, Richard Jones of Ashford, now over seventy, who attended the wake many times up to 1846, at which date he says it was fast declining. He, however, adds some interesting particulars, which show us how full of peculiar traditional observances these old hill-feast must have been ‘once upon a time.‘
The young men, he says, assembled on the hill by the Forked Pole, still standing as a guide-post for travellers, and there the young women met them. ‘Fine stand-up handsome wenches they were, and well-dressed too, nothing like’em now; but ye wouldna know ‘em the next day with a bag of coal strapped on their backs.’ (For in those days the coal from the Clee Hill pits was carried down the hill on women’s shoulders!) Well, the two companies met, and walked together in procession to a long ‘alley’ called ‘Tea-kettle Alley,’ walled on each side with blocks of mortarless ‘Dhu stone,’ the dark basaltic rock quarried on the Titterstone Clee. In this alley, – built, I presume, to give shelter to the picnickers, – they found the old women and married women making tea, for which a beautiful spring close by supplied the water, and also watercresses to add to the provisions they had brought, and to which they all ‘did duty’ at once.
Then the games began – kiss in the ring, racing and jumping for hats or shoes or neckties, wrestling, boxing, and so forth: to the inevitable accompaniment of beer sold on the hill. Often no work was done that week, but the whole time till Saturday night was spent in ‘keeping up’ the wake.
From ‘Shropshire Folk-Lore’ v2 by C. S. Burne (1885).
archive.org/stream/shropshirefolkl00jackgoog#page/n211/
Though no tradition exists of the erection of a pole or tree on the Wrekin on ‘Wrekin May Sunday,’ yet in Shropshire [it] is chosen as the scene of a May festival. ‘Wrekin Wakes,’ as the assemblage is commonly called, take place on the first Sunday in May, and in the beginning of the century were the most numerously attended of any of our hill-wakes, held as they were in the midst of the most populous part of Shropshire.
‘The top of the old hill,’ writes a correspondent of Byegones, ‘was covered with a multitude of pleasure-seekers, with ale-booth, ginger-bread-standings, gaming-tables, swing-boats, merry-go-rounds, three-stickes-a-penny, and all the etceteras of an old English fair.’ But the characteristic feature of the Wrekin Wakes, was the yearly battle between the colliers and the countrymen for the possession of the hill. An old villager, who had taken part in these frays, assured our authority that his side had always been victorious, because, if worsted early in the day, they sent messengers to the surrounding villages for reinforcements, and renewed the battle with increased numbers. Sometimes, when parties were evenly balanced, the Wellington men would turn the scale by allying themselves with one side or the other, after the manner of the Irish Members of the House of Commons’ but even they, so said the old countryman, generally preferred to help the country party. The fighting was really fierce: serious and even fatal injuries were sometimes received, and the disorderly scenes at last reached such a pitch, that when the Cludde family of Orleton bought up the manorial rights, etc. over the first portion of the hill, they determined to put down the wake by force. Accordingly they employed a party of constables, gamekeepers and so forth, to clear the hill of visitors on one particular Wake Sunday, and since then the wake has been done away with; but great numbers of holiday-makers ascend the Wrekin on ‘Wrekin May Sunday’ even now, and a good many on the following Sunday also.
At what date the Wake was summarily put down, I cannot say. A correspondent of Hone (Every-Day Book, ii. 599), writing at Wellington, in February, 1826, speaks of it as then held ‘on the Sunday after May-day, and three successive Sundays, to drink a health to “all friends round the Wrekin”; and adds, that ‘its celebration has of late been very properly discouraged by the magistracy, and is going deservedly to decay’; but says nothing of the forcible clearances made by the proprietors of the hill.
From C.S. Burne’s ‘Shropshire Folk-Lore’ v2 (1885).
archive.org/stream/shropshirefolkl00jackgoog#page/n208/
Perhaps it was rather as the octave of Whit Sunday than as an independent festival, that Trinity Sunday was chosen for the celebration of ‘Caradoc Wakes,’ one of those ancient hill-feasts which form a marked characteristic of Shropshire folk-custom. The Caradoc – in the folk-speech the ‘Querdoc’ – is the grandest of the beautiful Stretton Hills, rising to a height of 1600 feet above the sea-level, and commanding a glorious distant view north, east, and south.
Standing one day at the upper end of the Stretton Valley, in full view of the peak of the Caradoc, I was told that it was the abode of an imprisoned fire-demon, and that when a solitary cloud rests on the summit of the hill, there may be seen the hand of the captive monster, struggling to get free. My informant had received this strange tradition from her grandfather, who, like herself, was a native of the spot.
The Trinity Sunday Wake, held upon it, was one of the great events of the year in that neighbourhood. William Homes, wheelwright [..] gave me a vivid description of it, September 8th, 1884. It was held, he said, on the level ring at the top of the hill, which is surrounded by the battery for the cannon [it is a British entrenched camp!]. There ‘standings’ were erected for the sale of refreshments, and ‘a barrel o’ drink,’ or probably several, was tapped. Old women went in and out among the crowd hawking baskets of gingerbread, and the unfailing spring on the hill-top supplied water for the tea-kettles.
Games there were in plenty; foot-races for the young men; rolling cakes down the steep side of the hill, ‘and who could get ‘em, had ‘em;’ rough jokes and horse play at times. He remembered, when quite a boy, being penned into the dark cavern called King Caractus’s [sic] Hole, by some elder lads, who kept him there for fun till they were tired out. Then there were fiddlers and plenty of dancing, but the special feature of the ‘Querdoc Wakes,’ which attracted the young men from far and near, was the wrestling for a pair of huge leathern gloves for hedging or harvest-work, which were the prize of the best man- a prize for which my old friend, now in his seventy-eighth year, had often contended, and the struggle for which gave rise to much excitement, and now and then to the exchange of a few blows, when a worsted combatant would not quietly submit to be laid on his back.
And all this on Trinity Sunday, while ‘the good church bells are loudly ringing down [in the vale] below’! ‘And when was it done away with?’ I asked another ancient sage, James Coles of Leebotwood. ‘Oh, it died out on itself,’ he said: ‘It had ought to a bin banished lung afore it was.’ But down to the present time parties of young people may be met on the evening of Trinity Sunday returning from the Caradoc, where they have been spending the day on the hill in remembrance of the old custom.
P352 in volume 2 of C.S. Burne’s ‘Shropshire Folk-Lore’ (1885)
archive.org/stream/shropshirefolkl00jackgoog#page/n196/
In volume 1 (p94) she mentions that the cave is ‘on the steepest face of the Caradoc’ and was where ‘the King hid from his enemies after his defeat’.
Hesba Stretton (writing Oct. 18th, 1879) tells us of the ‘old custom, now quite gone, of ascending the Wrekin on Easter Sunday, to see the sun rise. He was expected to rise dancing,’ but one is not prepared to find the wonder innocently credited even now, as seems really to be the case no far from the foot of the venerable hill. The Rev. R.H.Cobbold [..], writes as follows, 13th October, 1879: ‘In the district called Hockley, in the parish of Broseley*, a woman whose maiden name was Evans, wife of Rowland Lloyd, a labourer, said she had heard of the thing but did not believe it true, “till,” she said, “on Easter morning last, I got up early, and then I saw the sun dance, and dance, and dance, three times, and I called to my husband and said, ‘Rowland, Rowland, get up and see the sun dance! I used,’ she said, ‘not to believe it, but now I can never doubt more.’ The neighbours agreed with her that the sun did dance on Easter morning, and some of them had seen it.‘
This is what happens when you look at the sun. From ‘Shropshire Folk-lore’ by C. S. Burne, volume 2 (1885).
archive.org/stream/shropshirefolkl00jackgoog#page/n178/
*Broseley isn’t hugely far from the Wrekin.
Every year on Palm Sunday crowds of people were wont to ascend Pontesford Hill ‘to look for the Golden Arrow,’ and within the memory of the older people of the district a regular ‘wake’ or merry-making was carried on there, with games and dancing and drinking. Even as late as the year 1855, or thereabouts, whole families, old and young together, were in the habit of ascending the hill on Palm Sunday as a matter of course, and even now a good many young people make this yearly pilgrimage: but of late years the practice has been confined to the wilder spirits of the neighbourhood, and has been little countenanced by the more repectable sort. Mrs. R-- of Castle Pulverbatch tells me (September 12th, 1884) that she never allowed her daughters to join in it, but that two of her sons did so on Palm Sunday last past.
When she first came to live in the neighbourhood in 1846, it was a great annual picnic. Every household was occupied beforehand in baking cakes and packing up kettles and crockery in preparation for ‘going palming,’ as it was called. It was said that there was a sort of emulation to be the first to gather a ‘palm’ or spray from the ancient ‘haunted yew-tree,’ the only one of its kind which grows on the hill, for the lucky gatherer of the first palm would ‘come in no misfortune like other folk’ throughout the coming year, whatever he might do or wherever he might go, provided he kept his palm safely.
The next proceeding was to race down the hill to the Lyde Hole, where a little brooklet which winds down a lovely narrow glen on the eastern side of the hill, suddenly turns and falls into a basin-like hollow at the foot of steep walls of rock, forming a deep circular pool, of which ‘folk suen to say as there was no bottom to it, but now they washen the ship [=sheep] there.’ Whoever could run at full speed from the top of the hill down the steep sides of the Hole (a physical impossibility, or nearly so), and dip the fourth finger of his right [left?] hand into the water, would be certain to marry the first person of the opposite sex whom he or she happened to meet. ‘You could not choose but that one must be your fate.‘
What the Golden Arrow is, the search for which is the professed object of the Wake, or how it came there, none of the folk can tell. Though many very old people have been questioned on the subject for the purposes of the present work, little has been elicited beyond a hazy idea that it was dropped by some great one in days gone by, and never found. ‘But,’ said Mrs. R--, ‘whenever it is found, some great estate will change hands, for it will never be found till the right heir comes, who is to find it.’ She thought the estate was that of Condover, of which so many similar traditions are rife, but on this point she would not speak positively, though she reminded me that the Squires of Condover were formerly Lords of the Manor of Pontesbury.
The only other person who knew any tradition on the subject was an elderly man, post-master at the neighbouring village of Minsterley (now dead), who declared in 1873-4, that a good fairy in those days gone by ordained the search for the Golden Arrow as the condition on which she would undo some unknown injury, curse, or spell, inflicted by a fiend or demon. But to be successful, the quest must be undertaken at midnight on Palm Sunday by a young maiden under twenty [twenty-one?], the seventh daughter of a seventh son.
From Shropshire Folk-Lore, by C.S. Burne, volume 2 (1885).
archive.org/stream/shropshirefolkl00jackgoog#page/n175
A little to the north-west of the tower are six rude stones or pillars placed on the summit of an eminence, in a circular order, forming an area of ten yards diameter. The largest is about eight feet high. They are known as the Duddo Stones, and some learned archaeologists have set them down as Druidical; but the local tradition is that they were placed where they stand in commemoration of a victory gained at Grindon, in the year 1558, by the Earl of Northumberland and his brother Sir Henry Percy, over a plundering and burning party of Scottish horse, accompanied, as Ridpath tells us, by some foot, who were either Frenchmen or trained and commanded by French officers, and who were driven in disorder across the Tweed. The accompanying sketch of the stones, showing their appearance in 1836, was published in Richardson’s “Table Book,” vol. iv., 1844.
From ‘North-Country Lore and Legend’ in the Monthly Chronicle for May 1869. Were there six at the time? You can’t see from the drawing (above).
It is, I understand, still believed in the neighbourhood that, every year on the longest night, all the ghosts (including, I suppose, spiritual beings of all kinds, and perhaps witches) of Shropshire “and the counties beyond,” assemble round the highest of the Stiperstones to choose their king.
From ‘Collectanea Archaeologica’ – Beriah Botfield’s 1860 address called ‘Shropshire, its History and Antiquities’.
books.google.co.uk/books?id=hjbnAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA60
At the extremity of the roof of the north transept of Ludlow church is placed an iron arrow. According to a popular legend still repeated, Robin Hood stood on the larger mound or low at the Old Field, and aimed this arrow at the weathercock of the church, but, falling a few yards short of its intended destination, it has ever since remained in the place where it fixed itself.
The arrow simply indicates that this was the Fletcher’s chancel; but the legend, made to explain its position, after the use of arrows was laid aside and forgotten, was probably engrafted on the tradition of a former legend which connected the low in the Old Field with the larger low which formerly occupied the site of the present church*; the one was visible from the other.
Also from ‘The History of Ludlow’, p29.
archive.org/stream/historyludlowan02wriggoog#page/n43
*what on earth? No, this is getting folklore speculation a Bad Name I’m afraid. Even I have to admit Mr Wright went too far this time. In his defence I suppose he is thinking there must have been a Low in Lud’low’, which he explains here:
themodernantiquarian.com/post/56264/shropshire.html
In Beowulf the treasures of ancient days which the dragon guarded, are represented as lying in a chamber or cave underneath the low. An old historian of the fourteenth century, Thomas of Walsingham, has preserved in his chronicle a curious legend relating to the village of Bromfield, near Ludlow.
In the year 1344, he says, a certain Saracen physician came to Earl Warren to ask permission to kill a serpent or dragon, which had its den at Bromfield, and was committing great ravages in the Earl’s lands on the borders of Wales. The Earl consented, and the dragon was overcome by the incantations of the Arab; but certain words which he had dropped led to the belief that large treasure lay hid in the dragon’s den. Some men of Herefordshire, hearing of this, went by night, at the instigation of a Lombard named Peter Picard, to dig for the gold; and they had just reached it, when the retainers of the Earl of Warren, having discovered what was going on, fell suddenly upon them, and threw them into prison. The treasure, which the Earl took possession of, is said by Walsingham to have been great. It is very probable that this treasure was a deposit of Roman coins, &c. found in the neighbourhood of the Old Field; and one of the barrows or lows there may have been the reputed dragon’s home.
A bit speculative but seems reasonable enough? From p28 of ‘The history of Ludlow and its neighbourhood’ by Thomas Wright (1852).
archive.org/stream/historyludlowan02wriggoog#page/n42
-stop press, folklore confusion shocker- Ms Burne says it’s the wrong place. Though it’s probably better to leave this here as I bet it’s repeated in countless books. And anyway, who knows.
The story of the Dragon of Bromfield .. does not refer to Bromfield in Shropshire at all, as Mr Wright supposed, but to Bromfield in Denbighshire, formerly in the Marches of Wales, which came into the hands of John Earl Warren in the 13th century; whereas Bromfield belonged to the canons of Bromfield, and after them to the monks of Bromfield Priory, from (at least) the time of the Confessor onwards.
archive.org/stream/shropshirefolkl01jackgoog#page/n282/mode/2up
The Heritage Gateway’s record says that the fort here at The Berth is rather exotic and unusual. It was originally set on two islands in a mere – these days the enclosures are more lumps in a wet meadow, though. They were connected to each other by a causeway of gravel, with another linking them to the surrounding land. Although originally Iron Age, the Berth was used into Roman times and a Roman bronze ‘cauldron’ was found near the causeway to the land. Berth Pool is on the south side of the mounds – I suppose it must be the remnant of the original mere.
The site first chosen for Baschurch Church was on the top of the Berth Hill. This is a smooth, grassy mound outside the village, crowned by the entrenchments of a British camp, and approached by an ancient causeway leading through marshy meadows beside a deep dark sheet of water called the Berth Pool, of which ‘three cart-ropes’ will not reach the bottom. But as long as the building was carried on on the Berth Hill, however hard the men worked during the day, ‘something,’ they knew not what, always pulled their work down again during the night, and threw the stones into the Berth Pool, until at last the disheartened people tried a fresh site, and then their work was allowed to remain.
Elsewhere in the same book (p68):
The same mysterious ‘something’ which interfered with the building on the height also threw the bells intended for it into the Berth Pool. Horses were brought and fastened to them, but were quite powerless to draw them out. Then oxen were tried with better success; but just as the bells were coming to the surface of the water, one of the men employed in the work let slip an oath, on which they fell back, crying, ‘No! never!’ And they lie at the bottom of the pool to this day.
From volume 1 of ‘Shropshire Folk-lore: A Sheaf of Gleanings’ by G F Jackson and C S Burne (1883).
archive.org/stream/shropshirefolkl00burngoog#page/n30/mode/2up
Monte Musine seems to have a bit of an eerie reputation? This (fairly random, I admit) page
itineraridelmistero.com/natura/il-monte-Musine.htm
talks of giants, werewolves, witches, ghosts – it’s got the lot.
Perhaps there have always been tales of ‘lights in the sky’ and now these have a new interpretation as alien UFOs. There is prehistoric rock art here, which interestingly has also been woven into the ufo myths. According to this snippet
books.google.co.uk/books?id=F7pZfLUoHJIC&lpg=PA323
flying-saucery scratchings were found in the 1970s, no doubt inspired by the genuine cup marks (some of which you can see at
rupestre.net/archiv/ar7.htm and in wido_piemonte’s photos of course.
This is interesting because it sounds like the original version of EquinoxBoy’s tale – his has been updated with the combustion engine to make it more contemporary?
No tradition.. exists of any [stones] having been removed, or that the group has ever been otherwise than it is at present. A certain superstitious respect still attaches to the spot, and may even have had something to do with the preservation of these curious relics, for gossip still records how upon one occasion some farmer, more zealous in the cause of agriculture than archaeology, attempted to remove one of them, and that the work was immediately arrested by a violent storm of thunder and lightning.
From ‘On Certain “Markings” on the Druid Circle in Holywood’ by Dr Dickson, in Series 1 volume 3 of the Dumfries and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society.
dgnhas.org.uk/transonline/SerI-Vol3.pdf
With regard to the Certain Markings (proposed cup-marks), a later expedition felt they were merely natural.
dgnhas.org.uk/transonline/SerII-Vol4.pdf
Alfred Watkins heard a local tale that the large stone or ‘Sacrificial Stone’ was said to be “the door of the Giant’s Cave thrown down.”
The Giant’s Cave is Clutter’s Cave. AKA the Hermit’s Cave. How many names do these places need?
Mr Watkins got a friend to recline on the stone as though he was about to be sacrificed and took a photo. He was seemingly convinced it was Suitable as it fitted the human body just right. He mentions someone else’s ideas who’d been observing the sun at the Midsummer, and thought that that would have been just the moment to do the deed.
Naturally he spotted a number of his leys around this area.
He published the idea and photo in ‘The Old Straight Track’, but this link (’Republications’) is more interesting because it comes with his own handwriting:
cantab.net/users/michael.behrend/repubs/watkins_misc/pages/giants_cave.html
Much of this [ruin of the walls] was due to to excavations which were made in the huts some fifty years ago, by people of the neighbourhood. An old woman of Llithfain dreamt that a copper cauldron full of gold was buried in Tre’r Ceiri. This unfortunate dream did more harm to the cytiau of Tre’r Ceiri than many centuries of natural causes of decay.
From an article in Archaeologia Cambrensis, Jan 1904: ‘An Exploration of some of the cytiau in Tre’r Ceiri’ by the Rev. S Baring-Gould and Robert Burnard. It includes some illustrations of their finds.
archive.org/stream/archaeologiacam05powegoog#page/n9/mode/2up
Possibly a bit mean – how much digging would you have done before you got disillusioned? Surely not much. But it does suggest that Treasure would not be seen as an unreasonable thing to find here, and also that dreams are not an unreasonable way of receiving believable information about such Hidden Things.
‘Some of the younger and stronger-limbed’ members of the Cumberland and Westmoreland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society took an excursion to this fort in the 1880s. I think they were a bit disappointed by its misleading name as well.
Just at the bottom of the hill is a bridge over the Eden. It sounds quite an unusual spot with its own lore:
Stenkrith Bridge .. spans the Eden at a point where the stream has worn the rock into numerous narrow channels, some of them of considerable depth. In places the agency of the stream, carrying with it fragments of harder stone, has scooped the rocks out into perfectly circular basins, well-known as pot-holes. When the river is low, as was the case on this occasion, visitors can walk among and around these basins, which are filled with the clearest of water, and form the most tempting-looking baths that it is possible to imagine.
At one place the whole stream of the river is contracted within so small a space between two mighty pieces of rock that a lady can step from one side to the other with the greatest ease. Some years ago the “pass” was still narrower, for it was then possible for a man’s hand to span the whole body of the stream, until some drunken boor resolved that his coarse fist should be the last hand to do such a feat, and brought a sledge hammer to work.
A glance was next given to the “demon-haunted cave” in the neighbourhood, an opening in the rock where can be heard rumblings which simple folks in days not very long past regarded as very “uncanny” sounds indeed, but which the realistic intelligence of the present day unhesitatingly ascribes to the movement of streams in the bowels of the earth.
It all sounds very fascinating to me. And don’t tell me your average Croglam Castle dweller wouldn’t have thought the same. From volume 5 of the Transactions (1881), available online at the Internet Archive.
archive.org/stream/transactionscum07collgoog#page/n105